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thinkahol *

YouTube - The End Of America - 0 views

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    More at http://www.theuptake.org ABOUT THIS VIDEO: President Obama's stimulus package is intended not only to shore up the economy, but the U.S. psyche. The American Dream itself. But what if we euthanize the American Dream? The Uptake wants to hear your voice. Submit your own video "letter to the editor." More information: How to submit a video 1) Have something intelligent to say 2) Record it on a video using your real name. 3) Upload it at www.tubemogul.com using info@theuptake.org as your log in and uptake411 as your password. 4) Send an email to info@theuptake.org telling us about your video. Dennis Trainor, Jr is a regular video contributor to TheUptake.org. He was a writer & media consultant for Dennis Kucinich's 2008 presidential campaign & a 2007 "Best of YouTube" nominee for his work as writer/ performer on "The Hermit with Davis Fleetwood." He is currently at work on two books: "My Progressive Dilemma" (chronicling President Obama's 1st year in office) and a novel adapted from his play, "I Coulda Been a Kennedy." Contact: dennistrainorjr (at) gmail (dot) com
thinkahol *

YouTube - Donald Duck Meets Glenn Beck in Right Wing Radio Duck - 0 views

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    This is a re-imagined Donald Duck cartoon remix constructed using 50 classic Walt Disney cartoons from the 1930s to 1960s. Donald's life is turned upside-down by the current economic crisis and he finds himself unemployed and falling behind on his house payments. As his frustration turns into despair Donald discovers a seemingly sympathetic voice coming from his radio named Glenn Beck.   Will Donald's feelings of disenfranchisement lead him to be persuaded by his radio's increasingly paranoid and divisive rhetoric? Or will our favorite Disney duck decide that this voice is not actually on his side after all? Watch and find out!   * Listen to Glenn Beck's response on his radio show to this remix video: YouTube via stopbeck.org - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHHByFFSh54  * Better yet check out ikat381's remix of Beck's response using Mickey Mouse: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbjjTLVrkKA  This transformative remix work constitutes a fair-use of any copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US copyright law. "Right Wing Radio Duck" by Jonathan McIntosh is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0 License - permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.  * Please link back to my website: http://www.rebelliouspixels.com * English captions are now working in case you're not fluent in duck-speak  * Learn about fair-use at the Center for Social Media: http://centerforsocialmedia.org * Learn about transformative works at the OTW: http://transformativeworks.org * Useful Media Matters archive of Glenn Beck clips: http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/  * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Jonathan McIntosh http://www.rebelliouspixels.com * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  List of Cartoons used:  * Window Cleaner - 1940 * Lucky Number - 1951 * Symphony Hour - 1942 (Mickey Mouse Cartoon)  * Put-Put Troubles - 1940 * Donald's Dilemma -19
Arabica Robusta

Keane Bhatt, "Noam Chomsky on Hopes and Prospects for Activism: 'We Can Achieve a Lot'" - 1 views

  • I think he would take it for granted that elites are basically Marxist -- they believe in class analysis, they believe in class struggle, and in a really business-run society like the United States, the business elites are deeply committed to class struggle and are engaged in it all the time.  And they understand.  They're instinctive Marxists; they don't have to read it.
  • In fact, Malaysia also came out of the Asian crisis.  It was imposing capital controls.  Now the economists were all saying it's a disaster.  But they did quite well.  Same with Argentina, the former poster child for the IMF, leading to a serious crisis.  It then disregarded all the warnings and doctrines and the economy did very well, contrary to predictions.
  • using the multidimensional poverty index, there were 645 million poor, or 55 percent of India's population -- more than in the poorest 26 African countries combined. 
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  • there is sometimes dramatic conflict between the developmentalists, like left president Correa, and the indigenous communities affected by mining and dams.  Also, Evo Morales, despite being hugely popular, recently had to deal with a very big general strike in Potosí.  What do you make of these dynamics?  What are the hopes and prospects in Latin America regarding raising living standards, the paths of industrialization, environmental considerations, the role of social movements, and avoiding state coercion?
  • I don't know of any simple general answer to your question of how this will all turn out.  The problems are often not simple.  A great deal is at stake, not just for the people of the countries.  Resource extraction impacts a global environment that is increasingly at severe risk.
  • You said, "It's quite striking that we and other western countries can't reach, can't even approach, can't even dream about the level of democracy they had in Haiti.  That's pretty shocking.  Here's one of the poorest countries in the world.  The population that organized to win that election is among the most repressed and impoverished in the world; they managed to organize enough to enter the electoral arena without any resources and elect their own candidate."  Praising Bolivia at the same time, you asked, "Is it believable that we can't do the same? . . . We can take lessons from them.  Anything they've done we can do a thousand times more easily."
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    The founding fathers were very concerned about the danger of democracy and spoke quite openly about the need to construct the democratic institutions so that threat would be contained.  That's why the Senate has so much more power than the House, to mention just one example.
Ahmad Al-Shagra

Saddam is Hanged for His Crimes, Who will Hang Bush/Blair for Theirs? - 0 views

  • Rumsfeld's famous hand shake with Saddam provides the proof on tha
    • Ahmad Al-Shagra
       
      Ridiculous misinterpretation to back such a statement
  • Saddam was originally a CIA man recruited to assassinate the previous Iraqi president Abdel-Karim Qassem
    • Ahmad Al-Shagra
       
      First time I hear this one, also not substantiated with references, this article should be in the science-fiction section
    • Jin Jirrie
       
      http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2849.htm Info on Saddam's relationship with the CIA
  • his war of aggression against Iran
    • Ahmad Al-Shagra
       
      From this I can safely say a Pro-Iran biased writer is the author
    • Jin Jirrie
       
      Iraq invaded Iran in September 1980 - partly instigated from a border dispute between the 2 countries - Iran was supplying the Kurds with weapons in the border areas. http://www.brucekelly.com/saddam-hussein-iran.html Both countries deployed chem weapons http://www.fas.org/irp/gulf/cia/960702/72566_01.htm The US supported Iraq against Iran. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/mar2004/irq8-m29.shtml
    • Jin Jirrie
       
      From a Facebook commentor on the article: "In a secret 1981 memo summing up a trip to the Middle East, then-Secretary of State Alexander Haig wrote: "It was also interesting to confirm that President Carter gave the Iraqis a green light to launch the war against Iran through Prince Fahd" of Jordan." U.S. National Security Adviser Zbigniev Brzezinski met with a Saddam Hussein in July 1980 in... Read More Amman, Jordan, to discuss joint efforts to oppose Iran."
    • Jin Jirrie
       
      From a commentator on the article on Facebook: "In a secret 1981 memo summing up a trip to the Middle East, then-Secretary of State Alexander Haig wrote: "It was also interesting to confirm that President Carter gave the Iraqis a green light to launch the war against Iran through Prince Fahd" of Jordan." U.S. National Security Adviser Zbigniev Brzezinski met with a Saddam Hussein in July 1980 in Amman, Jordan, to discuss joint efforts to oppose Iran."
    • Jin Jirrie
       
      Why doesn't this diigo thingy remove my posts when I tell it too ... grrrrr
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  • 700 thousands mostly civilian Iraqis during the last three years of American occupation
    • Ahmad Al-Shagra
       
      actually 6 years, and more than 1,000,000
    • Ahmad Al-Shagra
    • Jin Jirrie
       
      The article refers to the past 3 years - the last estimate by Lancet (as we know the US doesn't count the results of its carnage) was in 2006 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_surveys_of_casualties_of_the_Iraq_War 654,965 to 2006 - so a ballpark for the last 3 years around the 700000 mark is plausible if one accepts the Lancet methodology. http://www.iraqbodycount.org/ OTOH says around 100,000 all told.
  • hundreds of thousands of Iraqis
    • Ahmad Al-Shagra
       
      Millions in Syria Alone
    • Jin Jirrie
       
      Which incident are you referring to here?
    • Jin Jirrie
       
      Death counts from wars - good link is here: http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat4.htm
  • Saddam is just a "baby" ruthless dictator compared to Bush and Blair.
    • Ahmad Al-Shagra
       
      Is this still an article?
  • when he converted Iraq's reserve funds from Dollars to Euros
    • Ahmad Al-Shagra
       
      This happened in the 21st century, not the 80's, but its agreed on by many that it changed the game
    • Jin Jirrie
       
      Saddam's fatal mistakes of trading oil in euros, not dollars happened twice - In 1999 and in November 2000. http://www.globalpolicy.org/nations/sovereign/dollar/2003/03oil.htm
    • Jin Jirrie
       
      Saddam's fatal mistake of switching to euros from dollars for oil happened in 1999. http://www.globalpolicy.org/nations/sovereign/dollar/2003/03oil.htm
  • that were used to bomb Kurdish Halabja
    • Ahmad Al-Shagra
       
      CIA published a report back in the 80's stating Iraq did not own the Chemical Weapons used in Halabja, yet, coincidently Iran did.
    • Jin Jirrie
       
      Some still dispute the events, yet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halabja_poison_gas_attack and see discussion.
  • last three years
    • Ahmad Al-Shagra
       
      For the last time, 6 years - not 3
    • Jin Jirrie
       
      Sure - the article refers to the last 3 years though. I can't find any stats that cover the last 3 years death toll, so it's a fuzzy figure to me also.
Levy Rivers

Tom Watson MP » Blog Archive » Power of Information: New taskforce and speech - 0 views

  • We commissioned Ed Mayo and Tom Steinberg to write the Power of Information report because we knew that information, presented in the right way, was a potent driver for improving public services and government.
  • Today I am going to offer two arguments that I think compliment the Prime Minister’s recent announcement on public service reform
  • Firstly, that freeing up data will allow us to unlock the talent British entrepreneurs. And secondly, engaging people - using the simple tools that bring them together - will allow the talents of all our people to be applied to the provision of public services.
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  • The difference of course is that today we contend with what Richard Saul Wurman describes as a ‘tsunami of data’
  • My job is to make sure that government can benefit from this new thinking too. When we were first elected in 1997 people had a recipient relationship with data, they got what they were given when they were given it. It was static.
  • In scale, the spread of social media is comparable to the spread of telephones in the 1930’s to the 1950’s. Yet it’s happened in two years not 20.
  • As Clay Shirky would say, we’ve reached a point where technology is simple and boring enough to be socially useful and interesting.
  • Over 7 million electronic signatures have been sent, electronically, to the Downing Street petition website. 1 in 10 citizens have emailed the Prime Minister about an issue. The next stage is to enable e-petitioners to connect with each other around particular issues and to link up with policy debates both on and off Government webspace.
  • Only last week, the Prime Minister became the first head of Government in Europe to launch his own channel on Twitter, which I can tell you from experience, is extremely useful to his ministers at least
  • Richard is here tonight and I hope that after the formal proceedings you might like to share some of your own ideas with him. Richard is also joined by a number of other taskforce members. They’re all people with remarkable track records in this field. We’re lucky. The UK has some of the world’s leading talent.
  • And today the PM announced an initiative that would allow you to find your community Bobbies using your postcode.
  • The taskforce will bring its expertise to bare on existing initiatives to see if we can what we already do better
  • I want the taskforce to ensure that the COI and Cabinet Office produce a set of guidelines that adheres to the letter of the law when it comes to the civil service code but also lives within the spirit of the age. I’ll be putting some very draft proposals to the taskforce to consider later this week.
  • By bringing people onto the taskforce with the skills and experiences of people like Sally Russell we can move further and faster in this area.
  • Two weeks ago the Prime Minister signalled that we were moving public services to the next stage of reform. He said that we were not only going to, further enhance choice but also empower both the users of services and all the professionals who deliver them - to drive up standards for all.
  • Transformational government is about wrapping services around the citizen, not citizens around the services.
  • Last month DirectGov had over 7 million visitors. Peter is seeing the aggregate desires of millions of UK public service using citizens. I had half an hour with him a fortnight ago and came away with a dozen ideas as to how we can improve our public services.
  • I’m the Member of Parliament for West Bromwich East and I didn’t know about an important recycling initiative going on in my own patch. This information now means that a bag load of clothing for a small child and a habitat sofa are about given a second chance to give pleasure.
  • And much of that information has the potential to be reused in data mashups. Some of it already is, like Hansard on theyworkforyou, or Google Maps using Ordnance Survey data.
  • The Power of Information Report recognised that, and made recommendations to the Treasury. The Treasury, with the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, published an independent economic study in the Budget and announced its intention to look at these issues during this spending review cycle.
  • It was this early open source approach that arguably fostered 500 years of Islamic scholarship in important fields like medicine, astronomy, lexicography, literature and science. In contrast, European data was stored in monasteries and did not foster easy knowledge transfer. As Gibbon wrote in the ‘Decline and fall of the Roman empire’ the ‘age of Arabian learning continued about five hundred years’ and was coeval with the darkest and most slothful period of European annals?
  • I believe in the power of mass collaboration. I believe that as James Surowiecki says the many are smarter than the few. I believe that the old hierarchies in which government policy is made are going to change for ever. I said that I don’t believe the post-bureaucratic age argument. It’s just old thinking, laissez faire ideas with a new badge. The future of government is to provide tools for empowerment, not to sit back and hope that laissez-faire adhocracy will suffice.
  • The irony that laying claim to the ownership of a policy on open source was lost to the poor researcher who had spent a day dissecting the speech. He’d been able to do so easily because it was freely available on my blog, a simple tool used for communicating information quickly and at nearly zero cost without the requirement to charge for access. The point is, who cares? It doesn’t matter who has the ideas. It’s what you do with them and how you improve on them that counts.
thinkahol *

ColorOfChange.org - 0 views

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    ColorOfChange.org works to enable our members to speak in unison, with an amplified political voice. Below is a list of current and past efforts.
Joe La Fleur

Human Rights Court Rejects Soros' Insider-Trade Appeal | TheBlaze.com - 0 views

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    THIS IS WHERE THE MONEY FOR MEDIA MATTERS, OCCUPY WALL STREET, ADBUSTERS.ORG, MOVEON.ORG, AND THE DEMOCRAT PARTY COMES FROM.
thinkahol *

How Corporations Buy Congress | BuzzFlash.org - 0 views

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    With the November elections quickly approaching, the majority of  Americans will be thinking one thing: "Who cares?" This apathy isn't due  to ignorance, as some accuse. Rather, working people's disinterest in  the two party system implies intelligence: millions of people understand  that both the Democrats and Republicans will not represent their  interests in Congress.  This begs the question: Whom does the two party system work for? The  answer was recently given by the mainstream The New York Times, who  gave the nation an insiders peek on how corporations "lobby" (buy)  congressmen. The article explains how giant corporations - from  Wall-mart to weapons manufacturers - are planning on shifting their  hiring practices for lobbyists, from Democratic to Republican  ex-congressmen in preparation for the Republicans gaining seats in the  upcoming November elections: "Lobbyists, political consultants and recruiters all say that the  going rate for Republicans - particularly current and former House staff  members - has risen significantly in just the last few weeks, with  salaries beginning at $300,000 and going as high as $1million for  private sector [corporate lobbyist] positions." (September 9, 2010) Congressmen who have recently retired make the perfect lobbyists:  they still have good friends in Congress, with many of these friends  owing them political favors; they have connections to foreign Presidents  and Kings; and they also have celebrity status that gives good PR to  the corporations. Often, these congressmen have done favors for the corporation that  is now hiring them, meaning, that the corporations are rewarding the  congressmen for services rendered while in office, offering them million  dollar lobbyist jobs (or seats on the corporate board of directors)  that requires little to no work.  The same New York Times article revealed that the pay for 13,000  lobbyists currently bribing Congress is a combined $3.5 bil
thinkahol *

YouTube - Jeremy Scahill Comments on the Death of Osama Bin Laden & the US-led War on T... - 0 views

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    DemocracyNow.org -The manhunt for Osama Bin Laden is over. Nearly 10 years after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, U.S forces are said to have assassinated the Saudi-born founder of Al Qaeda inside Pakistan. At the time of his death, Bin Laden was living in a heavily fortified mansion just a mile from the Pakistani Army's principal military academy. The U.S. operation was reportedly carried out by 25 Navy Seals under the command of the Joint Special Operations Command. It is unclear what role Pakistan played in the killing. For analysis, Democracy Now! interviews Jeremy Scahill, the national security correspondent for The Nation magazine. This clip is part of an hour-long roundtable discussion about Bin Laden's death and the ongoing war on terrorism. Click here to watch the entire interview: http://www.democracynow.org/shows/2011/5/2
thinkahol *

American Soldiers speak out against the wars and accuse the government or crimes - YouTube - 0 views

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    Listen to and SUPPORT those American Veterans that are now AWAKE and MAD AS HELL!! Original maker of this video is http://www.youtube.com/user/StopTheRobbery2 http://www.ivaw.org/about/why-we-are-against-wars http://www.ivaw.org/ I don't think everyone should just comment. I think everyone should re post this video over and over until 1 Billion on the internet have watched this video. End the war by re posting this video. God bless the World and its people with peace and humanity.
Bakari Chavanu

Five Economic Reforms Millennials Should Be Fighting For | Politics News | Rolling Stone - 0 views

  • Some economists have proposed running a job guarantee through the non-profit sector, which would make it even easier to suit the job to the worker. Imagine a world where people could contribute the skills that inspire them – teaching, tutoring, urban farming, cleaning up the environment, painting murals – rather than telemarketing or whatever other stupid tasks bosses need done to supplement their millions. Sounds nice, doesn't it?
    • Bakari Chavanu
       
      Jeremey Rifkin's The End of Work proposes this idea.
  • What if people didn't have to work to survive? Enter the jaw-droppingly simple idea of a universal basic income, in which the government would just add a sum sufficient for subsistence to everyone's bank account every month. A proposal along these lines has been gaining traction in Switzerland, and it's starting to get a lot of attention here, too.
  • A universal basic income would address this epidemic at the root and provide everyone, in the words of Duke professor Kathi Weeks, "time to cultivate new needs for pleasures, activities, senses, passions, affects, and socialities that exceed the options of working and saving, producing and accumulating."
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  • Ever noticed how much landlords blow? They don't really do anything to earn their money. They just claim ownership of buildings and charge people who actually work for a living the majority of our incomes for the privilege of staying in boxes that these owners often didn't build and rarely if ever improve.
  • In a few years, my landlord will probably sell my building to another landlord and make off with the appreciated value of the land s/he also claims to own – which won't even get taxed, as long as s/he ploughs it right back into more real estate.
  •  Municipalities themselves can be big-time landowners, and groups can even create large-scale community land trusts so that the land is held in common. In any case, we have to stop letting rich people pretend they privately own what nature provided everyone.
  • Hoarders blow. Take, for instance, the infamous one percent, whose ownership of the capital stock of this country leads to such horrific inequality. "Capital stock" refers to two things here: the buildings and equipment that workers use to produce goods and services, and the stocks and bonds that represent ownership over the former. The top 10 percent's ownership of the means of production is represented by the fact that they control 80 percent of all financial assets.
    • Bakari Chavanu
       
      Defines capital stock
  • You know what else really blows? Wall Street. The whole point of a finance sector is supposed to be collecting the surplus that the whole economy has worked to produce, and channeling that surplus wealth toward its most socially valuable uses. It is difficult to overstate how completely awful our finance sector has been at accomplishing that basic goal. Let's try to change that by allowing state governments into the banking game.
  • There is only one state that currently has a public option for banking: North Dakota.
  • When North Dakotans pay state taxes, the money gets deposited in the state's bank, which in turn offers cheap loans to farmers, students and businesses. The Bank of North Dakota doesn't make seedy, destined-to-default loans, slice them up inscrutably and sell them on a secondary market.
thinkahol *

t r u t h o u t | By US Deaths, as of Today, Afghanistan Is Obama's War - 0 views

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    Five hundred seventy-five: That's how many US soldiers have lost their lives in the Afghanistan war since Barack Obama became president at noon on January 20, 2009, according to the icasualties.org web site, which tracks US soldiers' deaths using reports received from the Department of Defense - and which is widely cited in the media as a source of information on US deaths.
thinkahol *

t r u t h o u t | Jon Stewart | Elizabeth Warren's Greatest Hits (video) - 0 views

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    Elizabeth Warren on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, as compiled by MoveOn.org
thinkahol *

Teacher Layoffs and War | CommonDreams.org - 0 views

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    Our  government's perverse definition of "national security" was on  display again this summer. By large majorities, the U.S. Congress  approved a so-called emergency appropriation of $33.5 billion to  escalate the war in Afghanistan-adding to the more than $1 trillion  that the United States has already spent waging wars in Afghanistan  and Iraq.
thinkahol *

Every Day Is Halloween in Empire: The Zombie Apocalypse of Duopoly | CommonDreams.org - 0 views

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    Rockstroh writes: "Corporatists are Time Vampires: For a moment, reflect on the time lost - languishing in office cubicles, in commuter traffic -- or simply numbed-out and exhausted from the incessant, soul-sucking stress of the corporate state. " 
thinkahol *

:: Download Free Political Documentaries And Watch Many Interesting, Controversial Free... - 0 views

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    At freedocumentaries.org we strongly believe that in order to have a true democracy, there has to be a free flow of easily accessible information. Unfortunately, many important perspectives, opinions, and facts never make it to our televisions or cinemas (you can watch movies in our media category if you want to know why).
thinkahol *

Buck Up People...Progressives Won! | CommonDreams.org - 0 views

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    The veil of a happy Democratic governing majority is finally lifted.No, I am not playing the popular elementary school game of  Opposites Day. It's true. Progressives won in the 2010 mid-term  elections.
thinkahol *

It Was the Banks | CommonDreams.org - 0 views

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    Bruce Bartlett says it was a failure to focus. Paul Krugman says it was a failure of nerve. Nancy Pelosi says it was the economy's failure. Barack Obama says it was his own failure - to explain that he was, in fact, focused on the economy.
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